Teen Eating Disorders | Introduction
All teens are concerned about how they look. They want to be attractive and to fit in with others. But meeting society’s standards for looking good isn’t always easy, especially for girls. Girls are judged by their appearance more than boys are, and the standards are high. As always, physical attractiveness in females is based on pretty features, a good complexion, nice hair, and a well-proportioned body. Today, however, “well-proportioned” is popularly interpreted to mean “thin.” As a result, many teenage girls are unhappy with their bodies. This is especially true of those who, because of pressures or problems in their own lives, become fixated on weight as a way of achieving success or happiness.
As Dan Rather reported in a 48 Hours documentary,
Women are far more likely than men to be unhappy with the way they look, and their weight is the biggest reason why. The worrying starts early. Nearly half of all 13-year-old girls say they don’t like their looks. By 18, it’s up to 80 percent. One study even found that young girls are more afraid of being fat than of nuclear war or getting cancer.1
The result of this preoccupation with weight has been an increase in eating disorders, especially in girls and young women. Young men also develop eating disorders, but they are only 5–10 percent of those affected. Women make up 90–95 percent. For that reason, people writing about eating disorders, unless they are writing specifically about boys and men, will talk about girls and women and use the pronoun “she.”
Health professionals recognize three types of eating disorders. One is anorexia nervosa, in which a person has an irrational fear of getting fat and diets to the point of starvation. The second type of eating disorder is bulimia. A person eats large quantities of food and then makes herself throw up, takes laxatives, or uses other ways to avoid gaining weight. Third is compulsive eating, or binge eating. A compulsive eater eats large quantities of food, or binges, even when not physically hungry.
The American Anorexia Bulimia Association (AABA) states that more than five million Americans suffer from eating disorders. This number includes 5 percent of adolescent and adult women and 1 percent of men. The AABA also estimates that one thousand women die each year of anorexia. Other studies use percentages and say that 5–10 percent of long-term anoretics die of the disease. This means that anorexia has the highest death rate of all mental health illnesses.
In 1994, for example, twenty-two-year-old gymnast Christy Henrich died of “multiple organ failure” caused by anorexia. She had begun dieting after being told by a judge at the 1989 World Championships that she’d never make the Olympics if she didn’t lose weight. At that time she was four feet, eleven inches tall and weighed just ninety pounds. Her dieting developed into anorexia and bulimia, and in 1991 she had to withdraw from gymnastics because she was too frail. By 1993, the year before she died, she was down to sixty pounds.
Eating disorders now appear at younger ages. The average age of diagnosis used to be sixteen or seventeen. But it has dropped to fourteen for girls, and one study has shown that even fourth graders are “joining the diet craze and risk stunting their growth to maintain a very thin body.”2 Another survey found that of 2,379 nine- and ten-year-old girls, 40 percent said they were trying to lose weight. While some girls on diets are indeed overweight, others are yielding to societal pressures to be thin.
Pressure to be thin
Most experts believe these pressures are important reasons why so many girls develop eating disorders. Other reasons are found in the individual herself. These can include obsessive striving for perfection, low self-esteem, depression, conflicts over issues of control, family problems, discomfort with a changing body, uncertainty over society’s views of women, and psychological or social traumas such as sexual abuse.
Kelli McNeill developed bulimia when she attended a highly competitive, private high school. She wrote this for American Fitness magazine:
At the school I attend, [eating disorders] are the norm. To eat an entree at lunch would be scandalous. To go for second helpings would be anathema [horrible].
Girls who are “normal” by national standards appear heavy and out of place at my school. A typical girl’s weight is probably 10–15 pounds under the national averages. However, most of them still insist they are fat. Many girls who enroll as new students eventually lose weight as well. In a recent survey, one in 13 girls was worried about a friend who might have an eating disorder. The first thing one senior girl noticed after transferring here from another school was how fanatical the girls are about exercising and not eating.
Self-starvation is an accepted social behavior.3
Kelli recovered from her eating disorder. But not everyone does.
Can anything be done to reverse this trend to be thinner and thinner? Many people hope that, by working together, teenagers, parents, teachers, and counselors can bring about healthier eating habits. But the first step is to understand what eating disorders are all about.
